While Wind Chimes Whisper With a Song of Nostalgia
by ShinigamiForever
Summary: A generation of lovers, passed down father to son. Each their own fate, each an unhappy fate. Potter to Malfoy, Malfoy to Potter. Ashes to ashes, dust to dust. In the end, we all fall down. A Potter/Malfoy production.


While Wind Chimes Whisper With a Song of Nostalgia

By: ShinigamiForever

Summary: A generation of lovers, passed down father to son. Each their own fate, each an unhappy fate. Potter to Malfoy, Malfoy to Potter. Ashes to ashes, dust to dust. In the end, we all fall down. A Potter/Malfoy production.

Warning: Slash. Potter/Malfoy, both generations. In other words, James/Lucius and Draco/Harry (dominant one listed first, *wink*). Don't like, don't read, there's a back button. Very very very vague references to male/male sex. Oh yeah, it switches POV. The pattern is Lucius, Harry, Lucius, Draco, and then repeats. Except for the very last segment, which is Harry, Draco, Lucius. Anyway, it think you'll be able to figure it out.

Disclaimer: The characters aren't mine, they belong to The Goddess of Harry Potter, J. K. Rowling. 

A/N: So here's the question. I know this plot has been done before, so why am I doing it again? Because while this idea is passé, I do believe it is a beautiful one. And hopefully, I can somehow still make this interesting. But then again, any one who gives this fic an second of their time might run away screaming threats and throwing cars at my head (or computer screen). I don't know.

Regardless, enjoy.

===

Nothing fixes a thing so intensely in the memory as the wish to forget it.

-Michel de Montaigne

===

One might ask, how was it that I knew that he would make the same mistake as I did?

I would answer, life and history are an endless waltz. One tune is bound to repeat itself endless on a melody until someone decides to change what they are playing. This terrible little romance, this twisted painful story, is the tune which Fate plays over and over again until she deigns it time to stop.

One might ask again, how was it that I knew that it would end the same way as mine did?

I would answer, because we were not destined to end happily ever after.

One might ask suspiciously, then how did I ever think that they would fall in love in the first place?

I would answer, because all Malfoys are the same. We hide behind this façade of ice and cold, but deep inside, we tremble from some violent need. And all Potters are the same. They hide behind a false front of goodness and chivalry, but deep inside, they long to burn up against some dark flame. And when a Potter meets a Malfoy, they both suit each other's desires.

And the follow up question to that would be, is that love?

I would answer with my heart on my lips, yes.

***

At first, it was harmless. Completely and utterly harmless. A release of tension. A way to let go of fervent emotions. Another attack from both sides. But somehow, gradually, that changed.

It started, in all ways, as a one-sided change. I had a feeling that for Draco, long after I had changed, it had still stayed as a way to render me helpless. A way for him to attack. By leaving, he showed his utter contempt and disgust. And so those midnight rendezvous were just another battleground for Hogwarts' two rivals to meet and fight. 

But for me, it began to turn into a painful and passionate love affair with someone outright unattainable. He was Evil Incarnate, I was the Golden Boy. We were the two sides of a coin that would never meet, unless somehow that coin got stuck with its edge in a groove. 

Gradually, I fell in love with the young man who slammed me against the walls of the Astronomy Tower and then simply backed away, a strange glint in his eyes. I lost my heart, as the old saying goes, to the Draco Malfoy who crept up behind me and placed biting kisses down my neck. It was an irrevocable love, almost masochistic. It was like the storms in his eyes, subtle yet furious in their depths. He is beautiful when angry, gray eyes flashing gold and light in all directions. His skin becomes flushed, a scarlet blaze spreading across his cheeks. He is feral movement and fierce kisses. 

Always, mixed in my blood stream, is the taste of his lips against mine, his hands pinning my wrists against the floor. 

I watch him as he left, picking up his robes and swinging them on carelessly, brushing away the wrinkles. He gives no backward glance to me. I am huddled up on the floor in a ball, rocking back and forth, eyes pinned to his back. He feels no pain, is not in love, has no heart to hurt. And he barely lets the words goodbye issue forth from his lips before he reaches the door and opened it, stepping into the hallway silently.

I make the mistake of crying for him as he leaves.

***

I know exactly how your mind is reacting in this situation. After all, years ago, I was in that situation. 

You start out by thinking, it's nothing, he's just another way to vent out my anger. Neither of us are emotionally attached to each other, we can just step out the door and revert ourselves back to being enemies. But by and by, you start fixating on him, the way his hair looks in the morning, all scruffy and tousled, the way his eyes linger over something, the burning jealousy you feel when he laughs with someone else at his side, his hands, always his hands.

And eventually, you start to stop hating him and begin to obsess over him, learning every bit of him that you haven't yet learned as enemies. You know him so well you think you can write a guide book on his behavior. You then reach the stage where you begin to doubt everything, everything you've ever been taught, because you think you've finally cracked, you're in love with the sworn enemy. After that, it's the phase where you start to wonder, does he feel the same way? Does he think about you the way you continuously think about him, lying awake at night remembering the feel of his lips and craving for more? 

And then you capitulate, approaching him with the confession of your love, and then he will do the same, and both of you will share mindless blissful evenings together. 

I've been there. I've done that. And I know how it ends too.

Sooner or later, he will find his responsibilities and precious conscience catching up on him. He'll find some beautiful charming girl that is in love with him, and he'll convince himself that he loves her. You'll feel angry and abandoned, so in retaliation, you'll find one of your own. You begin to hate him again, thinking about him with that girl, and your hatred will manifest itself into icy coldness towards everything, towards him and the whole world for forcing both of you into that situation. You'll disillusion yourself into believing that you never loved him. He'll become cold towards you, both of you adopting an almost business like manner towards each other. Inch after inch of common ground will start to crack away.

And when you finally lose him, everything comes crashing down on you in bitter waves of hurt. You'll start to blame yourself for everything that happened. You start to shut yourself away from the world, enclosing yourself in a glass house of wistful longing and fear. In the end, you reach the point where you really just don't care, because all you ever wanted in life is gone. Days and nights become a constant blur and ache. You lose touch with the world.

Draco, my son…

Pity your father. I have loved and lost.

Pity your lover. He is bound by cords of love and responsibility.

Pity yourself. You love now, but soon that too will be stripped from you. 

And none of us can forget.

***

In my 16 years of life, I have only heard my father tell me he loved me once.

It was when I was 5. I caught a fever, a hellish one at that. My temperature refused to go down, and my family had to resort to Muggle treatment, which angered my father so badly he almost kicked the doctor into the fearful blizzard outside. But I was caught in a pile of snowy blankets, drowned in layer after layer of soft warmth, oblivious to the turmoil of the outer world. In my white world of unconsciousness and sleep, I drifted in and out of reality. I was unaware of the cool towels my mother put on my head, or the anxious glances that were so rare on my father's face.

When the fever finally broke, I woke up to find my room darkened and unnaturally warm. But what was stranger was the presence of my father sitting on the bed, staring out the window at the darkened sky. He had his hand on my forehead, patting my bangs in a paternal fashion. I stayed quiet in childish curiosity, watching my father through lidded eyes. He looked gaunt in the faint light, as if he had been the one asleep. The severe gray eyes that always shot such terrible fear through me were glazed over. 

"Draco," he whispered, a strange despair in his voice that was rarely there. "My son." He had only called me as his son out of disgust, never in that soft cherishing voice. "I love you," he had said, the words awkward when formed by him, and he looked frankly scared of them, as if saying them could induce such tragedy. He left soon afterwards. My mother was the one who discovered I was awake.

He had thought I was asleep. Under no circumstances would he have told me that he loved me. I never heard those words spill from his lips again. But I cherish them as they are the dearest memory of my father I have. He was only gentle and loving in my strangest dreams and wishes. 

Even Ron Weasley had a loving father. Then again, he has nothing else.

I wonder if, given the choice between having prestige and having a loving father, I would choose a loving father.

***

He is the mirror image of his father. From the midnight kissed hair to the sun touched face to the svelte lean body. He even had the reckless grace. 

I would know. I spent 7 years watching James and over 25 some years thinking about him. 

I also know how you felt when you first saw him. He was the unpolluted, the untainted, so unbreakable. You wanted to know what it would feel like to destroy him. But under those violent longings, you wanted to know if his love could wipe away the stain on your soul.

I would know.

Those were the feelings I had about James Potter the first time I saw his deathly charismatic face and his ocean blue eyes. 

The first emotion was love. Undoubtedly, it was love that first drew away my breath.

But the second and third emotions, quick on the heels of love like hungry wolves, were fear and hatred.

***

I once had a dream that I was bleeding. It was a small cut across my chest, right above where the heart was. And then you appeared, dabbing your fingers in that blood, that pretty dark red liquid- wrong, wrong, all wrong- that spilled out like my love. The cut didn't hurt, and I didn't die, but you looked so painfully dazzling that I thought I would die anyway. You took those blood-stained fingers, the red stains contrasting appallingly against your pale skin - wrong, wrong, beautifully wrong- and smeared them across my cheeks and my arms and my chest, smearing it all over my bare skin. And you smiled.

And then I woke up. I first thought I really was bleeding, because there was something wet running down my cheeks, like the blood you rubbed over me. But then I realized it was the smear of tears. At first, I was glad.

Then, I realized I wanted it to blood, so I could see that smile on your face.

You frighten me in a way I could never escape. 

***

My father was a Death Eater before me. As the child of a Death Eater and the Malfoys, I was taught lessons.

The first one was, 'Be close to nothing. Everything can be destroyed.' Unconsciously, I learned it when I was an infant. I knew that food should never be taken for granted, that one day, those warm arms of my mother would disappear, replaced by the hard surface of some weapon or whip. 

So when I heard from my childhood friends how that lesson was taught, I was not afraid. My friends told me they take the object most dearest to you and destroy it. It might be a teddy bear, some blanket, a book, something of that sort. No humans. That was the 4th or some lesson.

When it was my turn, they could find nothing to destroy. I had alienated myself from everything. 

They never went through the conventional process for the other lessons either. I knew them automatically. Never show your emotions. Never trust others unless you have proof of their veracity, and even then they could be lying. But lying could be beneficial if used for you side. There is no good and evil, only a side that could offer you more and a side that could offer you less. Death is not the worst thing that could happen to you. People will all have to die eventually, so make use of their short life. On and on and on.

But most of all, never fall in love. Love is the most dangerous weapon and the safest shield.

It was the only lesson I never fully learned. 

***

In the beginning, I thought, you could never love me. Maybe you would try to lie to yourself and say that you loved me and repeat that to yourself so many times that it was almost true. But I thought you could never truly love me.

Of course, that belief was founded on the idea that unrequited love was not love. You see, I believed that even if the love you held for a person was powerful, it would eventually die out anyway if the other did not love you in return. That was how I convinced myself that I did not love you. And that way, even if you did somehow fall in love with me, nothing would happen, because I did not love you.

Love is like bleeding to death; when started, it can never be stopped.

And so, when I first laid hands on you and you did not immediately throw them off, it was an invitation for me to press my lips against your skin. And when you finally relaxed and responded, it was an invitation for me to pull you down further into a whirlpool of heady desire. And things slid downwards from there.

But I made a mistake by forgetting that love was a double-edged sword. When the wielder cuts, he leaves a cut on himself. Strike, backlash, strike, backlash, and so on. The idea is that the attacker must keep the larger part of himself.

Once again, my mistake.

So that is how I fell in love. By forgetting, by mistaking, by slipping, by falling. To reuse a cliché, the hunter became the hunted. Except, in this case, both hunters are the hunted and visa versa. We can never regain the solid ground we once stood on. We are always skidding down in small degrees. One day, we will reach the bottom of the mountain and the ground will open up to engulf us into Hell.

We weave tangled webs for each other with silken threads of fate.

***

You think I am oblivious to your every movement. You have an innate sense that I am watching you, but you are not conscious of my eyes following you every where, taking in each of your changes.

There is a different mask over you today. You're home, but in truth, you're still up in that goddamn tower with him, your skin touching his, taking, giving, wanting, refusing. It doesn't matter how well you act while your body is here. Your soul is already lost.

We are playing chess in the den, the board laid out in front of us in all its black and white glory. Your head is tilted slightly into your propped up hand and you are watching the board. The pieces are still, waiting for your command. You are taking your time. Like a china doll, perfectly pale and blond, every strand tucked neatly behind your ear, the ones that dangle are even planned. Your eyes- so reminiscent of mine, yet so different- lack the usual dry sparkle. They are still back at Hogwarts, watching a solitary young man weave his way through the library.

The chess pieces click against the board as they move, long ago forgetting how to speak. The clicks are the only sounds in the den. Your breathing is light. Mine is silent.

You beat me in thirty moves. There is no gloating on your face, no triumph, no victory. Just mindless acceptance. There is no defeat in my face. Just acknowledgment.

While I am watching you sit there, my hand is already setting up a new game.

***

I used to wish you would hit me. Still do, in fact. If I had to die in front of you, I'd want to do it in a way that you would be watching me, your face turned to mine. Nothing with the echo of your receding back slapped in front of my eyes. I like the feeling of your teeth and your hands and your pain. Not because it was pain, but because it was your pain. It was the essence of you.

If you didn't like something, you would freeze up, then turn towards me with this condescending smile on your face. You would touch my face lightly, then pull away, gone and unreachable.

You said you knew I was a virgin when you touched me. You said I didn't know how to kiss. I think it was more than that. You already knew my body so well, every curve and angle of it.

It was like you had already made love to my subconscious.

I'm just full of strange thoughts today.

***

The first few months after our graduation, I sent him owls. Anonymous letters, messages that only he would understand. Bits and pieces of poems. A little phrase that sent chills down our backs. Fragments of songs. 

I left him at least 40 messages before I gave up. He only replied once. It was when I asked for us to meet. His reply was an ambiguous scrawl that told me he still thought about me.

It was enough for me. 

To tell the truth, I didn't know what I would say if we did meet. Still don't, to this day.

***

You are passive, giving yourself up. You used to respond, either to push me away or to lean closer into me. There is no fire in your body left. 

I think I have stolen it all.

Somehow, the thrill of love is gone. There is only the feel of a greater emptiness.

I have destroyed both of us.

***

He was mine before she even laid eyes on him. He was the first one I ever saw after stepping onto Platform 9 and 3/4. In all his slyphlike grace and gentle black robes, he was my first exposure to a world not full of dark forests that cried in their sleep. I had already claimed him as mine before the train even moved. 

He in turn knew I would always be his. So the love she based her marriage on was already lost to another. He had no love to give back, only compassion and perhaps adoration. But no longer love. He and I had drained the passion and desire out of our blood and heart.

I wonder if that made a difference. If that makes Harry Potter, the son, any less sacrosanct. Because it is like part of my life went into Harry as well. Because he was part of James, who was in turn part of me.

Does that make Harry my son too?

***

Tonight, we both sleep on the floor of the storage room. It doesn't matter, he'll leave in a couple of hours anyway, but for the moment, we are both curled up on the floor, on top of our robes. He is turned away from me. I'm staring at his neck, the blond strands tickling the skin.

I lean in closer, my hands balled up at my sides. And I breath in his scent, cold winter air and night sky and apples, mint and wintergreen and rain pounded earth. I press my nose against the back of his neck, desperate to get closer to him.

In my head, I scream 'I love you' over and over again to compensate my ineptitude of saying it aloud.

***

The notes he used to slip to me are still stored away in my desk drawer. His handwriting, the way he used to write Lucius, is engraved in my head. When I sleep, his name and mine are entwined, then pulled apart, each slash and curve and line twisted until they are just a pattern stamped across my mind. 

I keep thinking, if maybe I remember the way he tastes and smells and looks and writes, he'll never really be gone. I think I'll never be able to rub that smell away from my skin and nose. I think I'll always smell like James Potter. 

I think I'll never be able to stop hearing his voice say my name. I think I'll never be able to watch the ocean shore without seeing his eyes.

I think I'll never stop loving him.

***

In my mind, the image of you is a person in a room full of heavy cloaking darkness. When you look up, there's this type of light that just spreads across, from wall to wall, lighting it up everywhere. And all the people in the room become dancing stars, each with their own light and color. 

You walk from star to star, choosing the ones you think are beautiful and storing them away in your heart. In the end, only the decadent ones are left behind. You then shut the door behind you, the drapery of night once again hanging in the room.

You never choose me.

That's why I wanted to break you as I did. Because I thought, if I made you as dark as I was, you would be able to stay behind with me.

It's no excuse for what I did, mind you. But it's a reason.

***

On some nights, I dream of you under the light of the full moon, soaking in its rays as if you were thirsty for their light. I dream that you never died, that I was never furious at you, that we stayed together, that I wasn't desperate enough to join Voldemort, that we grew old together, that we adopted sons. I dream that we would go out on picnics, that we would make love under the shade of a willow tree, that we were graced with love and life, that no one had to cry. I dream that Sirius and Remus would come bother us every week, that Lily was just a friend to tag along, that I would tolerate them, that we would joke and have fun times together.

Those nights, I find myself awakening to hands clutching the sheets in a death grip and my pillow slightly damp from salt water.

Those nights, I look out the window and wonder how quickly I would die if I jump.

***

I don't know what to say to your accusations. I don't know how to reply. I can only stare mutely at you, eyes starting to sting with what I know is the arrival of tears. Your hands are clamped around my shoulders, shoving me against the wall. Your face is twisted in an image of rage and betrayal. There is nothing for me to say. I can't deny them, I can't affirm them. 

"I love you," I gasp against the clenching in my chest and the pain around my shoulders. "I've loved you for 6 years." It's no real reply, it's just the shock talking in mindless words.

"Liar," you spit in my face, your eyes screaming with your emotions, fury and hurt and sorrow.

"I love you! Do you hear me? Isn't that enough? What do you want me to say?!" I yell back, straining against the vises on my body. It is my turn to rage against him. Anger, simply anger and love and blame and-

guilt.

"I love you. Isn't that enough?" I say again, repeating empty words. I am lost.

"Are you done?" you reply, calmed down now. You are ice and frost and disbelief and pain, such sweet agony. You have once again withdrawn into your hut of solitude, isolation like a second skin. Your hands have left my shoulders, now crossed across your chest nonchalantly. Like a business man.

Rage. Anger. Blindly red light. Weariness. Tired. Looking for a response instead of the empty blank look you are giving me.

"I am now." And I withdraw from him too, slamming the door behind me.

The bruises on my shoulder hurt. But not as much as the tears that bite down my cheek.

***

When you're leaving someone you have loved for a very long time, someone you still love, you think about all the stupid little things you should have done with more often. Like tickle him to hear his hysterical laughter echo in the empty room. Or to tease him during Potions class, drifting a touch lightly down his thigh to watch him squirm in delight. Or sneaking out of the school and into the school grounds where you would tag with him. Or buying Christmas presents that were flat out ridiculous but endearingly loving. 

You think of the strangest things. Like his ears, a perfect rim of pink and peach. Or his cheekbones, that are highlighted with the most fantastic colors, light whites and yellows and reds.

But in between watching his hand drift up to jerk at his bangs and remembering late nights you spent watching him sleep, it hits you. The way he casts that pleading look at you, the way he seems to be watching you.

You never made him hate you at all.

***

They say true love is blind. Or, as I preferred it more, smoke gets in your eyes. The thick tempting smoke that never clears away.

You can't see it, can you? Standing on the platform, watching him as he says his good-byes to his friends for the summer, you can't see the way stunned and hurting expression that he has. But then again, I didn't see it either. Only looking back now, watching the same scene being acted here, on the same old stage, do I see the way his eyes flashed with inner pain. As I see them on his son's face.

You are making your way steadily to me, but the corners of your eyes are trained on his face, his body, his movements as he makes his solitary path to his Muggle family. You are both traveling parallel to each other, and for a moment, I see the image of him and me in juxtaposition over this image of you and Harry.

It is the same story. It is the same ending. Or rather, it has not reached its ending yet. But it will be the same ending.

Years later, it will be you and him waiting for your sons to exist.

We are fools to tempt fate.

~fin~

A/N: Whew. Long and tiring, I'm supposing. I was tired of Lucius being portrayed as a stuck up father who was too strict for his own good. But anyway, reviews are highly welcome.

Thanks to everyone who read! 


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